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Cosatu anxious about mini-budget, hopeful Gigaba will rise to occasion

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Tuesday, 24 October 2017 14:18

ANA reports that labour federation Cosatu said on Monday that it was looking ahead to the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) with some trepidation even though it hoped that Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba would rise to the occasion.

Gigaba will deliver his inaugural MTBPS on Wednesday, setting out the fiscal policy objectives and government spending priorities over the three-year expenditure cycle. In a statement, Cosatu said this policy statement will come at a time when the economy has barely recovered from a technical recession and has yet to pull through towards a firm growth trajectory. The federation highlighted that SA was struggling a real unemployment rate of 38%, with close to 10 million people struggling to get jobs and more than half a million jobs lost in two years. Some 17 million people are on welfare. Cosatu said things were made worse by the dramatic Cabinet reshuffles in March and October that saw ministers in key portfolios fired, and two sovereign rating agencies downgrading SA to junk status.